"Haven't I, honey?"

"Haven't you----" Hertha questioned.

"Made life pleasant for you?"

"Oh, yes indeed."

"Miss Witherspoon was talking like she thought you ought to get married,
but I told her you were happy here with me and not thinking of anything
of the sort."

"No," Hertha said, "I'm not expecting to get married."

"I'd like to have you get your work and show Miss Witherspoon the dress
you're making. She does her own sewing here as well as mine," Miss Patty
explained as Hertha left, "and I'm as much interested in it as she is."

It was a long day for Miss Patty's maid, but when she was released she
did not at once go home, but walked to the river bank and wandered a
little time by the shore. Every one was within the great house, the
twilight had come, and she could stop, as Tom loved to stop, and think.

As she went slowly along the path that she and Tom had traversed only
two days ago, she felt as though it were she, not he, who had gone away
from home and all its surroundings out to the open sea. Every landmark
with which she was familiar was left behind, her reserve, her modesty,
her pride. Two days ago she was anchored to her home in the cabin, to
her black mother and sister and brother; they were first, supreme in her
thoughts. She was attached to Miss Patty, who petted her and made her
feel less a servant than a loved child. Two days ago as she walked over
this path, she was at peace, and every murmuring sound, every flicker of
sunlight, every sweet, pungent odor sank into her spirit, and held her,
as she would have put it, close to God. Her religion, as she had
unconsciously evolved it from the crude, but poetic gospel of the
colored preacher, and from the commune she had held with nature, was
harmony, the oneness of man's spirit with the eternal goodness. It had
been largely an unconscious belief, born of her own tranquillity. But
now the tranquillity was broken, and peace would not return. Shutting
her eyes, she listened to the air singing in her ears; she tried to feel
herself carried out of the turmoil of the morning into the tabernacle of
the spirit.

But it was of no use. It was gone, home, work, religion. She had left
the shore and was in a little boat, blinded by the spray, tossed on a
sea of tumultuous desire. Tom, too, was out there somewhere on the
ocean, but it was the same Tom who had walked with her Sunday. If their
boats should meet, his and hers, he would not know his sister. S